


and i count the days till the end of summer

by othellia



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Domestic, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Post-Episode: s05e22 The Gift, Post-Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-09 17:25:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11673711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/othellia/pseuds/othellia
Summary: Set Post-S5, Willow never resurrects Buffy from the dead. Spike carries out his promise to watch over Dawn till the end of the world.Warnings for attempted date rape and violence against aforementioned date rapist.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Woohoo, so this is both my first Buffy fanfic and my first fanfic written in present tense. It's a bit angsty, a bit fluffy. Hope you guys enjoy!

It’s Giles who finally speaks first.

He stares straight ahead, eyes focused on something far, far in the distance. “We need to move the—” His jaw locks. “We need to move her.”

A cry pierces the air. The agony is so thick and raw, it takes Spike a second to realize it hasn’t come from him.

“No!” Dawn screams, launching herself in front of Giles. “You’re not touching her! She’s not—!” The fear in her eyes travels down, paralyzes her throat. “She’s not...”

Xander’s the next one to shake loose of his trace. “I should take Dawn home,” he tells Giles. “She shouldn’t have to watch...”

He gently lowers Anya to her feet and approaches Dawn, but the younger girl rips herself away, fighting his grasp with arms and fists and kicks and jabs.

“No! Let me go! You can’t—!”

“There’s nothing we can do!” Xander yells. “Buffy’s dead!”

The final word drops heavy in the silence.

None of them can un-hear it.

“It’s— It’s over,” he whispers.

Xander grabs Dawn again and this time she doesn’t resist. They make it four steps before she stops, dragging her feet against the gravel.

“Dawn…” Xander says.

She bites her lip. “What about Spike?”

The question shocks Spike out of the blank, heavy fog that settled around everything. For just a moment, there’s only smooth peaceful clarity… and then the weight of reality crushes back in, the weight of everything that’s happened, of the mistakes _he_ made, of Buffy’s corps— of Buffy, lying sleep-like before him.

“What about him?” Xander says. “Spike’s a grown vampire. He’ll surv—” Xander glares darkly at Spike; resentment emanates off him in waves. “He’ll be fine.”

“He’s hurt,” Dawn protests. “And he’s running out of shadow.”

The bit is right. There’s only a five foot patch around him and it’s shrinking by minute. Spike finds himself not caring. He welcomes the sun, welcomes the blinding light and the burn and the oblivion—

_I'm counting on you to protect her._

Buffy’s voice echoes in his head, clear and raw, and he hears himself automatically respond:

_Till the end of the world._

Spike groans.

Why’d he have to go and make such a bloody stupid promise? He should’ve known it was a trap, a trick, the Slayer’s way of permanently locking a collar onto the pathetic, lovesick vamp. And for that matter, why was he putting so much weight into promises? He was a vampire for crying out loud, an evil soulless vampire who—

Movement catches his attention. It’s Dawn, kneeling down before him, a tarp held over her head. She extends it so it covers Spike as well.

“Please, don’t leave me,” she whispers in a trembling voice.

Just like that, another gate in his chest bursts, and he buries his face into her shoulder and cries.

* * *

Dawn spends only one more year in Sunnydale. The Scoobies do their best to keep Buffy’s death a secret—partly to keep the demons and other nasties at bay, partly out of some fucked up version of denial—but like all great cons, it falls apart in the end. The long absent Mr. Summers shows up to claim his daughter and together they go back to L.A.

Spike follows.

After all, he’s damned if he’s going to see Buffy’s sacrifice be wasted all on account of a couple hundred paltry miles.

He spends most his nights camped in the side alley of her father’s townhouse, on watch for any enemies who might be hoping to throw in one final, post-mortem punch at the Slayer and her loved ones. He’s leaning against the chain link fence one night, starting on his second cigarette when he senses a familiar presence.

The intruder steps into the light of a nearby streetlamp, and Spike’s hackles only raise higher.

“Heard you were here,” Angel says. “What trouble are you causing now?”

Once upon a time, Spike would’ve thought up some clever insult—or not so clever insult; now he just recognizes it for the stupid pissing game it’s always been. He takes another slow drag of his cigarette. “Personal business,” he says. “So toss off.”

Angel’s fingers wrap around Spike’s throat, slamming him into the chain link fence. It rattles around him. Somewhere along the row of townhouses a dog begins to bark.

“Get the hell out of my city,” Angel snarls.

“Your city, is it? Care to show me the deed?”

Okay, maybe Spike isn’t totally above pissing contests after all.

Angel growls in response. The next thing Spike knows, he’s been thrown hard against the concrete; the blood from his injuries wafts up through his nose and to his brain before the pain does. A shock of excitement rushes through him, a knife cutting through the layers of dead everything that’ve been slowly burying him, choking him, over the past year. He hears a chuckling sound and realizes it was himself. Launching himself at Angel, Spike loses himself in the fight, in the punches and the kicks and the pain and the thrill. Then his feet are swept out from under him and even that’s okay because Angel has him against the ground and when Spike closes his eyes he can imagine every hit coming from Buffy instead, and he embraces it. He embraces the pain, embraces the punishment, embraces the—

“Stop!” yells a familiar voice. “Get off of him!”

A brown blur shoves herself into Angel’s side. It doesn’t move him an inch, but he stops his attack. His eyes narrow as he stares, confused, at the bit.

“Dawn?” Angel says.

Her fists tremble at her side. “Get the hell off of Spike.”

Spike sighs. So much for being a capable bodyguard. If his charge comes barreling out of her house whenever he’s in danger, she’ll be straight up measuring herself for the meat locker.

Angel doesn’t loosen his grip on Spike’s shirt collar. “Dawn… I didn’t know you were in L.A.”

“Wow. Really? And here I thought I had you on the Christmas card list this whole time.”

Angel gestures at Spike. “I caught him lurking outside your house.”

“Big shock,” Dawn says, rolling her eyes. “Spike was on guard. That’s what he does. What were _you_ doing here?”

If Angel is surprised by Dawn’s words, he doesn’t show it. “I got reports of a vampire spotted in this area. Multiple reports…” He grimaces at Spike, like the younger vampire is something unpleasant that won’t stop clinging to the bottom of his shoe. “Dawn, you can’t seriously be saying you—” His eternally brooding frown deepens. “Spike doesn’t have a soul. He can’t be trusted. Think of what Buffy would say if she—”

Dawn lets out a choked laugh. “Think of Buffy? That’s seriously your best line? Buffy’s the one who _asked_ him to protect me.” A dark look shutters over Angel’s face but the girl presses on. “And you want to talk about trust? You really think I’d trust you over him? After you broke into our house and drew me sleeping? After you signed that drawing by bleeding out my hamster and pinning its corpse to the wall?”

Technically, Spike thinks, those memories never happened. Like everything in Dawn’s life before the year with Glory, they’re nothing more and nothing less than seamless fabrications. For once Angel is blameless… Of course, not that Spike can remember what had _actually_ happened to argue in Angel’s defense. And it probably hadn’t been that far off from what he _could_ remember, come to think of it, and it’s not like he’s about to stick up for the great poof anytime soon, not when—

“That wasn’t me,” Angel says.

Spike chuckles. And of course his grandsire goes off and deflects responsibility in the complete direction.

“Right. Angelus,” Dawn says, grim-faced. “You know… you’re right about one thing. Spike doesn’t have a soul. And do you know what that means?”

Angel is silent.

“It means that his absolute worst is already right in front of me,” Dawn says. “And if his absolute worst consists of binging trashy soaps and nicking smokes to smoke in non-smoking buildings and generally watching out for me, well…” Her eyes are clear and piercing as she levels them at Angel. “I trust that absolute worst. I don’t trust yours.”

When his grandsire still doesn’t respond, Dawn tries again to push him off of Spike. He doesn’t resist this time, instead stumbling backwards as if in a daze. Dawn loops an arm around Spike’s and hauls him to his feet. Too late, Angel apparently realizes where she’s taking him.

“Dawn, wait!”

He lunges for them, but they’re already over the kitchen threshold. Angel’s hand bounces harmlessly off the barrier. Betrayal carves itself into the older vampire’s face, and if the rest of Spike’s life wasn’t so shitty and torn apart at the moment, it might’ve actually given him some long coveted satisfaction.

Dawn hoists Spike further up against her. He hisses—yep, definitely at least one broken rib—and Dawn’s eyes flash with renewed anger. She turns to Angel who’s still standing in the townhouse alley.

“You weren’t a part of Buffy’s life anymore when she died,” Dawn says cooly. “And you sure as hell aren’t a part of mine.”

And then she slams the door in his face.

* * *

Spike’s chip begins firing erratically several months later. It starts off as a bloody nuisance, and quickly worsens from there. He can’t remember the last time anyone cried over him quite like this. As the world swirls and spins above him, pain dragging him in and out of consciousness, he’s aware of Dawn, frantic, sobbing above him. Her fingers continually sweep over the sides of his head, pressing against his bleached curls as if she’s trying to reach in through into his skull and fix everything herself.

When he finally comes to, it’s on a medical slab.

Spike sits up in an instant. There’s no racing heartbeat, no rush of adrenaline. He’s dead; he doesn’t have those things. But there _is_ fear, deep in his bones…

Not again.

Sensing movement, his face shifts. He pounces, growling as he drives a soft body into the wall.

“Spike?” a small voice cracks.

As his vision clears, he realizes he’s choking Dawn. Her face is red and tear-streaked, her mouth open as she gasps for breath.

Spike drops his hands, stumbling back in horror.

A split-second later, he realizes the chip hasn’t fired. He hurt Dawn— nearly killed her…

And the chip hasn’t fired.

His legs shake as he backs into the medical slab and he braces himself against it.

The medical slab.

Dawn is still against the wall. She’s crying again, her eyes squeezed shut, not looking at him.

“What happened?” Spike asks, his voice shaking. “What did you do?”

Dawn bursts out into sobs. It takes him a second to realize she’s started to talk through them, her words babbling and slurred.

“—managed to get a hold of the Initiative and they said the chip was never supposed to be permanent and that it was breaking and it was breaking you with it and they gave me a choice and I—”

Dawn claps both hands to her mouth and slides to the floor. Spike’s fear moved past his bones and starts to squeeze across his chest, but he pushes past that—latching onto fear did nothing for the here and now—and cautiously approaches. He wants to reach out and comfort her but this seems like one of those times when physical contact will just make things worse so he crouches in front of her instead, resting both arms on the tops of his knees.

Dawn shakes her head. “I know I shouldn’t have— But they said a replacement chip might eventually break too and that your first one already caused enough damage that the second one could possibly kill you and— And so I—” She takes a shuddering breath. “I said you were reformed. Said that you’d gotten a soul and that you’d never kill anyone again. And they— well, Riley was here and he knew Angel and how that soul worked and he said he trusted me to judge whether that was good enough.”

Spike stares at her as her words slowly click into place.

He’s free.

He suddenly envisions chomping down on Dawn right there—sinking into the blood and the warmth and the _lust_ of it…

His fingers clench and unclench as he forces himself to draw back into his own skin. He looks around the medical lab. There are no visible cameras or microphones but it’s the bloody military and he’s still Hostile 17 in their eyes; there’s something hidden somewhere.

Dawn sniffles, and he returns his attention to her.

Spike knows he can’t talk freely but the question still tumbles from his lips: “Why?”

She looks up at him then, blue eyes staring into his own. “I can’t lose you too.”

A simple, naive answer.

The demon in him wants to mock it, but there’s trust in that gaze. Love. Not like the love he had—still has—for Buffy. Not an all-consuming fiery blaze of torture. It’s something… smoother, cooler.

But just as strong.

Pushing aside any and all philosophical quandaries for now, questions over what kind of a monster—what kind of a man he’ll become without a mechanical jailer to keep him in check, Spike pulls Dawn into a tight hug. She keeps crying. Spike idly wonders if there’s a physical limit to tears; he certainly feels like he’s broken a couple world records on some of his darker nights. As she curls deeper into him, he cradles her head and runs his fingers through her hair, gently, methodically, like he occasionally used to during Dru’s worser breakdowns.

“Shhh,” he whispers. “You and me, we’re staying together. Till the end of the world.”

* * *

The removed chip becomes a blessing once Dawn reaches her college years. As his niblet makes her way through club after club on the weekends, Spike’s soon reminded that not all the world’s evil comes in convenient demon-shaped packages. While Buffy always sent unwanted drunks running with a single pinch grip, her younger sister—for all her mental fortitude—lacks the physical strength to pull off those kind of moves.

So Spike does it for her.

The latest one is a pathetic wanker who took a single invitation to dance as full permission to lay his hands wherever he bloody well pleased. Spike has him against the wall of a back hallway by the number’s first chorus. He growls out threats that make the man blanche even paler than him, and if he slips into game face for just a second, let his claws dig into the man’s throat, drawing blood… if afterwards he licks it up, simultaneously reveling in the taste of anything human and disgusted that he found even a droplet of pleasure in such scum… well, that’s just part of what being a vampire is all about.

A confusing, fucked-up dichotomy to the very end.

Spike returns to the main room with his head dipped into just the lightest bit of blood haze. As the music’s echoing bass thrums through him, a voice in the back of his head whispers that a dip wasn’t good enough. He needs to sink himself further, needs more blood, needs—

He pauses, frowning.

He needs to find Dawn.

The little niblet isn’t where he left her. He scans the room. Not at the bar either… or at the front where she sometimes goes to flirt with the musician of the week. Uncertainty begins to drip through his blood haze like a cold chill. Spike doesn’t regret taking the small taste, but thinks maybe he could’ve hurried up his threats by dropping two or three body parts from each of them.

As he pushes past a dancing couple, lost in their own world, their bodies slick with sweat, he finally catches a whiff of Dawn’s scent. He turns to see a brown bob of hair at the far end of the room, headed straight for the back alley exit.

A growl rises in his throat.

Dawn knows about the kind of dangers that lurk in the night. She never leaves without telling him first.

Spike shoves his way through the dance floor, ignoring the curses and shoves he gets in return. The feeling of wrongness increases until it’s physically pressing on the back of his spine. As he draws closer, he can see her stumbling, legs dragging as a dark-haired man guides her, pulls her away from the crowd. Her scent too—beneath the usual coconut and mango is a sour, rotten… ooze.

“Stop,” Dawn whispers weakly. “I don’t… What are we…?”

“Shhh, baby. It’s alright,” the man whispers back, hugging her tighter to him. “Everything is alright.”

Spike growls again. He feels himself involuntarily slip into game face, and he doesn’t stop it. As he cracks his knuckles, one thought flashes through his head, blinding him to all else:

This man is going to die.

Painfully.

Spike stalks the two of them out of the club, letting the man do half his work for him. They enter the shadows of L.A.’s back alleys. Alone.

“I can’t…” Dawn mumbles again, still resisting despite whatever hell-brewed cocktail he must’ve slipped her. “I’m not supposed to…”

The man has the audacity to chuckle at that. “What? Got a boyfriend? Don’t worry. Tonight I’ll make sure you forget _all_ about him.”

Whatever little patience Spike had snaps.

He steps into the center of the alley. “Didn’t you ever learn to listen to a woman when she says, ‘no’?”

The dark-haired man stiffens, then turns around. Dawn is half-draped over him, her head lolling against his chest like one of Dru’s dolls.

“Piss off,” the man snaps. “The girl’s coming home with me. She _wants_ to come home with me.”

“Oh? How ‘bout we hear that from the lady herself?”

Dawn slowly lifts her head, clearly struggling. “Spike?”

The man groans. “Hell… Guess this is your boyfriend then?” He squints at Spike through the darkness. “Ugly as fuck. Can do way better than him you know…” He pauses, eyes sweeping up and down Spike’s form like he’s seriously considering whether he can take the vampire in a fight. “Whatever. Didn’t want her anyway.” He shoves Dawn back at Spike who catches her easily. Her skin is clammy to the touch and her fingers tremble as she clutches at the edges of his duster.

“Spike, I…”

Spike lays a kiss against her forehead. “Stay with me just a bit longer,” he whispers. He gently eases her down, then looks up at where the dark-haired scum is already sidling away.

Spike has him up against the alley wall a second later.

“What the fuck, man?! I already gave her back to—”

The man chokes in horror, eyes widening as he views Spike clearly for the first time. His silk shirt is unbuttoned and his neck is bare, laid open for the feast. Spike’s fangs descend, his body screaming for blood, but if the previous drunk in the club had been revolting, then this is… Spike doesn’t want to taint his body by ingesting any part of the man.

Still, a simple neck snap is too good, too fast. Full on torture is tempting, but he doesn’t have time for that. Not with Dawn lying sick and unprotected behind him.

He ultimately settles for a kind of middle ground.

Warm blood gushes around his fingers as Spike punches his claws through the soft, unprotected skin of the man’s stomach. He drinks in the pain that strangles the man’s face, watches as it slowly pushes out all other thoughts… and then he twists his hand out and snaps the man’s neck.

The corpse drops, just one more piece of garbage for the city to haul out in the morning.

Spike wipes his hand on the side of his jeans, shifts back to his human face, and returns to Dawn. She’s lying on her side, her eyes fluttered shut, but still breathing.

“Come on, Niblet,” he says, pulling her into his arms. “I told you to stay with me.”

When she doesn’t immediately respond, Spike pries open her mouth and shoves in two fingers from his clean hand. Her body instantly convulses, gagging. He holds her hair back as she retches out everything she’s consumed over the course of this hell-cursed night, and murmurs soothing words into her scalp.

Finally she stops, although her shoulders still tremble. “Spike…” she says again. Her voice is hoarse. “I didn’t want to go with him. I didn’t… I was watching my drink. I _swear_ I was watching my drink—”

“Nothing to apologize for, love. S’not your fault.” He pulls out the handkerchief he keeps for the nights when she has one too many and dabs at her face. “It’s all over now.”

Dawn lifts her head at that.

She looks across the alley. Looks at the corpse.

Buffy would’ve judged him right then. Would’ve shoved him away, called him a monster… or maybe she wouldn’t have. Who knows. Spike gets a little more unsure with every year that passes.

“I wanna go home,” Dawn says.

“Sure thing.”

Spike helps her to feet. Dawn leans against his shoulder, breathing in. As he starts back towards the direction of the UCLA dorms, she stops and then shakes her head against him.

“I wanna go home to your place,” she clarifies. “And when we get there, I want… I want to watch Passions.”

Spike stares at her. “You hate Passions.”

Every couple months Dawn sits down with him and watches an episode. Tries to watch an episode. As far as he can figure, it has something to do with how much her mother used to loved it. It’s her attempt to bond with a ghost. She can never hide her boredom though, and usually gives up before the second commercial break.

“Do you have it recorded or not?” Dawn presses.

She’s pouting at him now—a good sign. If she’s capable of teasing and humor, she isn’t as gone as he’d thought.

“I’ve got it recorded,” he assures her.

They stumble down the alley together. As they reach its end, he hears another small whisper. “Spike?”

“What, love?”

There’s silence at first, then:

“Thanks.”

Spike looks down at her. The girl is a such a small, frail, trusting thing. She is Buffy’s legacy, created to be protected by Buffy… but she’s also become a person in her own right. Whatever response he could’ve given her gets trapped somewhere in his throat. He squeezes another hug around her and they both continue home.

* * *

It’s a boring, straight-laced man that Dawn chooses in the end. Aaron Rodriguez is his name—some book nerd she originally met in her freshman art history class. Spike frequently mocks him. He doesn’t let Dawn know its because the boy reminds him uncomfortably of the man he’d been long ago, before Drusilla turned him. He doesn’t let her know about the nights he follows them back home from a pub at night—guarding, not stalking—the nights when Dawn laughs without restraint, the sound echoing down the whole block, and the boy smiles softly in return…

He doesn’t let her know about the way his chest goes hollow at those moments— well, more hollow than normal. It’s like he’s watching some perverted version of the future that should’ve been— that _could’ve_ been his.

And as soon as Spike thinks it, a nasty voice that sounds all too much like Angel whispers that he’s a bloody stupid fool to think that kind ofhappiness was something he’d ever had a chance at having. And it’s almost too much to stay.

But he gave Buffy his word.

So he stays.

When the engagement finally happens, Dawn insists on an churchless, nighttime wedding. The Rodriguez family—staunchly Catholic—attempts to persuade her otherwise, but Dawn manages to hold her own with the stubborn streak that’s practically a Summers women trademark at this point. Her fiancé understands, barely—Dawn has told him about Sunnydale and he tolerates Spike’s position in Dawn’s life even if he doesn’t jump for joy over it.

Three months before the wedding, Dawn asks Spike to be her Man of Honor.

Three minutes of shocked silence later, he accepts.

* * *

It feels itchingly sacrilegious when he’s finally standing up by the altar. His tuxedo collar is stiff around his throat and he misses his duster. He can’t believe the bit convinced him to leave it aside.

Willow and Tara stand next to him. A fourth girl, one of Dawn’s college friends, rounds out the bridal party. If Xander and Anya feel excluded, seated out where they are with the rest of the common guests, between Xander’s bright smile and Anya’s smeared mascara, they’re not showing it.

The wind picks up, rustling the trees around them. An echo of the past comes back to him:

_—a breeze tosses the leaves aside and, again, you're registering as Mr. and Mrs. Big Pile of Dust—_

Spike closes his eyes.

If Buffy was here, she’d disapprove of this whole thing. Stand up and shout, “I object.” The whole nine yards. It’s bad enough that he’s a man taking over some other bint’s role, add soulless vampire into the holiest of holy ceremonies mix and she would’ve probably dusted him on principles alone.

Or maybe not.

Spike tries not to think about those things anymore.

Still, when Dawn finally appears, walking down the aisle with her dad at her side, glowing with happiness and seeming like she’s beaming just as much at Spike as she is at her husband… well… Spike decides that perhaps life after Buffy isn’t the complete void of emptiness he thought it'd be after all.


	2. Chapter 2

Dawn’s post-wedding bliss lasts eighteen months.

It’s Spike fault; he should know by now that everyone he loves, he curses.

Dawn is flopped carelessly on the living room couch when it happens. Her laptop is on her thighs, resting just below the curving swell of her ever-growing belly. She checks her email, oblivious to the telly as Alex Trebek lists out the next round of categories. Spike sits perched on the armrest with his evening mug of blood, watching for the both of them.

It’s become a tradition of theirs, a kind of reverse-morning invitation to tea and biscuits. As soon as the sun sets, Spike comes over and stays with Dawn until her husband gets home from work… Sometimes he’s permitted to stay longer. It all depends on the mood. Dawn likes him, her husband doesn’t, and he doesn’t want to be the one to drive a wedge between them. His bit has suffered enough domestic heartache.

There’s a knock at the door.

Dawn answers it.

Spike hears a flurry of voices—the police. He hides his mug.

Seconds later, there’s a crash. The foyer table has gone down and Dawn’s falling with it. Spike barely catches her before she hits the floor.

A car accident, the police eventually tell him in place of Dawn’s unresponsiveness. Drunk driver, nothing the paramedics could do, sorry for your loss, etcetera, etcetera… They give Spike some information about a morgue that he ignores, and then they leave.

One hour later, Dawn hasn’t moved.

“I can’t,” she sobs, clutching to him like driftwood. She shakes her head. “I can’t—”

He cradles her to his chest. “Yes. Yes, you can.”

Dawn continues to ramble into his shirt—she’s not strong enough to go on, she doesn’t _want_ to go on. Spike forgets what he says in response. It doesn’t matter. Not really. He knows there isn’t anything he can say to help her in this moment, no secret words or phrases that can magically fix things.

He knows because he’s been through it before.

Right now there’s only him and her, the two of them anchoring each other to the world through touch alone. And Spike can only bite his tongue and pray to the Powers That Be that it’ll be enough.

* * *

In the weeks that follow, Spike cancels the lease on his flat and moves into Dawn’s basement. After a long phone conversation, Willow and Tara pack up their spell books and temporarily move to LA too. They take the guest bedroom.

There’s an uneasy, surreal sleepover feeling at the start of it. The four of them frequently bump into each other and apologize and smile and continue stumbling along their way in a daze. It’s the first time they’ve all lived together since Sunnydale, since those initial months of hell. Figures it’d take a second death to reunite them, and sometimes Spike wants to spit at the school-play-acting feeling of the false cheer. But it seems to help Dawn, and he supposes that’s all that matters in the end.

Three months later, they wait together in the hospital. Spike gets scolded by the passing nurses for fiddling with his cigarette pack let alone lighting any, while Willow and Tara stay still and hold hands. It’s agony waiting. It’s agony listening to his bit’s muffled screams.

At last the doctor fetches them, leads them into the delivery room where Dawn is cradling an even tinier newborn. Her face sheens with sweat, eyes heavy with exhaustion, but she smiles at them all the same.

“Spike? Willow? Tara?” she says tentatively. “Say hello to Jocelyn. Jocelyn Buffy-Anne Summers.”

* * *

“Higher! Higher!”

Helpless to resist a direct command, Spike hoists the little girl higher into the air. Her makeshift cape flutters behind her as he swings her horizontally back and forth in front the mirror. Her arms are flung out and she makes zooming sound effects with her mouth—the model superhero.

Then the front door opens and Jocelyn doesn’t care about flying anymore. She squirms out of Spike’s grasp and drops to the floor. He lets her, following at a smooth walk as she scrambles down the stairs and into the kitchen where Dawn is dropping the week’s groceries onto the counter.

“Mommy!” she squeals, tackling Dawn’s legs. She lets go and jumps towards the refrigerator. “Today in class we talked about families and we all had’ta draw ours and look what I drew!”

She climbs onto a stool and thrusts a sheet of paper into her mother’s face. “That’s you and that’s me,” she says, pointing at the two stick figures in the center of the drawing. “That’s Auntie Willow and Auntie Tara—they’re holding a flower because they like flowers. And that’s Uncle Spike!”

Dawn examines the drawing for a moment, then lifts her gaze to Spike’s.

“You made Uncle Spike… bald?”

“No! That’s his hair right there!”

“White crayon, love,” he explains to Dawn. “Bit Jr. did her best.”

“I’m sure she did,” Dawn says, laying kisses into her daughter’s hair. “It’s beautiful.”

Her mother’s approval obtained, Jocelyn re-sticks the drawing onto the fridge. Spike stares at it for the second time that day.

He’s not entirely sure what to think. He isn’t holding hands like the others are—so points for that—but he’s wearing the same insipid smile with not even a splash of red crayon around the mouth to hint at the demon underneath. As he ponders the implications of single crayon picture on his non-existent reputation these days, Dawn suddenly begins talking about dinner and coupons and the possibility of grabbing takeout from Outback Steakhouse complete with bloomin’ onion and, just like that, there are more important things in his life.

* * *

When Jocelyn Summers hits high school, she also hits a small goth phase. It’s all quite understandable to Spike—not everyone grows up with a vampire for an uncle and two witches for aunts and an ex-mystical ball of energy for a mum. Dawn doesn’t take it quite as well; he figures it’s all her teenage rebellious, near-death experiences coming back to haunt her. Spike tries to enforce her house rules, but he can’t help but take pride in Jocelyn’s black fingernails, combo boots, and oversized headphones blasting the Ramones.

After all, what was youth without a little freedom?

Well, freedom within reason.

“Those will kill you,” Spike says one night.

Jocelyn takes a long, slow drag from her cigarette. Her feet hang over the side of an abandoned rail overpass. Below, a dozen punks from her school are throwing a bonfire in an rusty oil drum.

“You smoke them,” she finally says.

“I’m already dead.”

She snorts at that, and Spike takes it as an invitation to sit beside her. She doesn’t make a move to stub out the cigarette, but she doesn’t take a second drag either, so Spike decides to chalk that up as a win. They both gaze down at the punks gathered below.

“They think they know it all,” Jocelyn says. “Acting all cool. Kings of the world.”

“Compared to what? You?”

Jocelyn shrugs, flipping her hair. “I don’t try to act cool. I know I am.”

Spike has a thousand responses to that and none she’d actually listen to, so he keeps his gob shut. As he stares, there’s a movement in the shadows of the overpass. Spike tenses.

Vampires.

Jocelyn picks up on his muscle twitches. “Trouble?” she asks, excitement quivering through her voice.

Spike sighs. He can’t have Bit Jr swanning off home to Dawn with detailed tales of carnage, but he can’t leave her unprotected at the top of the bridge either. She has Taekwondo training—been taking classes since she was four—but they were emergency skills only, and only made a noticeable difference against the living.

“Stay behind my back,” Spike finally mutters. “Don’t get in the way.”

His annoyance lifts slightly at the sheer glee that passes across Jocelyn’s face and the way she jumps to her feet at the prospect of violence.

* * *

“On your left!”

Spike whirls at the sound of Jocelyn’s voice and slams the attacking vampire into the alley wall, stake driving into the creature’s chest. It’s been six months the start of their secret patrols. Spike knows it’s bad, knows that Dawn will throw a fit if she ever finds out… but that’s the problem about his whole _‘not having a soul’_ thing—his simple knowledge of the badness gets dwarfed by the fire that burns through him with every fight.

Plus Jocelyn turned eighteen this year; she could make her own decisions. Willow and Tara helped too, teaching her both defensive and offensive spells, giving her charms that boosted her reflexes and endurance. The bit’s not as good as a slayer, especially not _his_ slayer—no one would ever be—but the way she dances…

If Spike loses himself in the bloodlust enough, she’s just similar enough to her aunt that he can pretend… He can pretend the bricks in the alley walls are Sunnydale bricks. That it’s still the turn of the millennium and not whatever godforsaken year this is.

The last vampire goes down in pile of dust.

Spike’s bloodlust begins to fade, and he senses a familiar presence across the alley. His head jerks towards it, a growl rising unbidden from his throat.

Angel steps out of the shadows. “Long time, no see,” his grandsire says with a nod.

Jocelyn stiffens, turns to Spike. “Who’s this?”

“Just what I was going to ask you,” Angel says.

“Jocelyn Summers.” She steps forward before Spike can stop her. “Now answer the question.”

Angel stares.

And stares.

“Jocelyn Summers? As in daughter of Dawn Summers? Buffy summer’s niece?” Angel waits for Jocelyn to nod before letting out a harsh noise of disgust. “You were always pathetic, Spike… but this?” He shakes his head. “This is a new low.”

Jocelyn’s grip on her stake tightens.

“I mean, chasing after Buffy was one thing, but her family? There was a reason I let go, Spike. And you… I can’t believe you have the gall to corrupt her memory by pawing yourself off against some copy—”

Angel’s slams into the ground. It takes Spike a second to realize that he hasn’t moved, that it’s not him pinning Angel down, but Jocelyn herself. Her stake hovers over his heart as her glare drills him further into the asphalt.

“Angel, I’m guessing?” she says, the words coming out in a breathless pant. Magic always brims beneath her skin, but it’s not everyday she expends enough to land a surprise attack on a master vampire. “Mom and Aunt Willow told me about you. They said you’re not bad a guy, relatively speaking.” She pauses to blow a strand of hair from her eyes. “They also told me how Aunt Buffy asked you for help after Grandma’s funeral. How you left her.”

“I didn’t—”

The stake lowers, and he shuts up.

“I get that. I’ve done my own research as well. I know about Angel Investigations. I know how you help people. I know you can’t be everywhere at once. But that doesn’t change the fact that you left her. That means you left my family. Which means you don’t have the right to insult them.”

“But—”

“Uncle Spike is family. And if I _ever_ you talk that way about him again, I’ll have this stake driven so far into your chest, it’ll sprout a goddamn giving tree and get picture books written about it.”

With one final scowl, Jocelyn climbs off Angel. She grabs Spike’s shoulder and tugs him away. “Come on, Uncle Spike. Let’s go home.”

* * *

Back when Dawn and her husband were still in the throws of post-honeymoon bliss, Dawn had championed for a house with a back porch—her one and only HGTV deal breaker. Spike is grateful her stubbornness won out. He likes sitting on it, likes waiting for the moments when one Summers woman is forced to escape the chaos of the other and comes to sit beside him. There’s a peaceful stillness to those moments, a stillness that reminds him of the time he first sat and provided comfort… the time that, in hindsight, marked the inevitable beginning of the end.

Jocelyn sits next to him now.

“I broke up with Noah,” she says.

Spike glances sideways at her. Jocelyn had been dating Noah for a good two years. Personally, Spike’s glad to hear the sudden news—he didn’t think the boy was good enough for the girl. Of course, Spike suspects he won’t ever think _any_ boy good enough for the Summers women.

Himself included.

“I finally gave him…” Jocelyn ducks her head beneath her hunched shoulders. “Gave him the talk.”

Oh.

The talk.

The talk where she confesses monsters are real and her live-in uncle is one of them.

“He took it poorly,” she says as though it wasn’t obvious.

Spike frowns. “You know you don’t need to mention me,” he says despite wanting to scream, _Yes! Yes, you do._ “You can live your life without me.”

“I know…”

Bitterness laces through Spike’s mouth as he remembers Dawn’s not-at-all-recently-deceased husband, Aaron Rodriguez. Dawn had tried once upon a time, not to shove Spike out so much as… smooth his edges? She tried to pretend he was part of the family but without all the demon and monster bits to offend. The Rodriguez side of the family was very traditional, very Catholic, and Dawn still did her very best to maintain ties. Blood family was important. Of course, they rarely visited during Jocelyn’s childhood, and when they had, they’d muttered softly, shooting dark glances at all three of them—Spike, Willow, and Tara. Two years ago, after one particular nasty Thanksgiving argument, Jocelyn officially dropped the Rodriguez from her name.

Spike still doesn’t know how Dawn quite feels about that. He knows enough not to ask.

“I know I don’t have to mention you or really _any_ of it…” Jocelyn says, twisting a bleached curl of hair around her finger. “But that’s not what I want. If someone says they love me, but they make me pick and choose… then they’re not worth it. Period.” She turns to Spike with a resolute spark in her eyes. “You’re family, and family always comes first.”

Spike swallows, a difficult motion considering the sudden lump in this throat.

“Spike?” Dawn calls. “Jocelyn?”

He thanks all that’s holy and unholy for the interruption. Dawn is standing in the open doorway to the kitchen with mug-laden tray. She lays a wordless kiss on both of their temples before passing out the hot cocoa. Taking one for herself, she sits herself on Spike’s other side. The three of them stare up into the night sky, stars blotted out by L.A.’s ever present light-and-smog stew. Spike takes a sip of his drink, and—as the sweet warmth washes down his throat—life is good.

* * *

Dawn Rodriguez-Summers lives to celebrate her seventy-eighth birthday. When her health takes a sharp decline, her family takes shifts at the hospital. They all make sure someone is always at her side. Willow and Tara take mornings, while Jocelyn, her husband, and their two children spread their visits out over the afternoon. Spike—surprise, surprise—takes the night shifts.

Night shifts don’t technically exist in the hospital’s official visitation hours, but Spike has never put much (i.e. any) stock into official anything. When the sun sets, he swings in through the emergency room, slinks past the occasional security camera, and makes his way to the upper floors. Dawn sleeps straight through most nights, hooked up to God-only-knows what drug cocktail, but every so often she’ll wake up, body wracked with the aching insomnia of old age.

And that’s when he’s needed.

“Thank you,” she says in the darkness of one night, the words coming out a raspy whisper.

Spike snorts because what else can he do when his niblet is so weak, so… _grey_? “Not like I exactly have the boomin’ social calendar these days.”

Dawn coughs. It takes her awhile to regain her breath. When she does, she places a hand over his own, her skin stretched thin like waxpaper, and they both know she’s thanking him for a lot more than a couple hospital visits. Spike’s free hand automatically searches for the cigarette pack in his duster pocket. He can’t smoke here, not with Dawn’s lungs they way they are, but the temptation gnaws.

“And…” Dawn says. “Forgive me.”

Spike freezes at that. Dawn’s still holding onto his hand, but she’s staring blankly up at the ceiling. His blood chills where it sits sluggish in his veins, his mind racing in panic— _she can’t be gone, not that fast_ —until his ears sense the pulse of her weary, yet stable, beating heart. It’s still clutching onto the land of the living.

For now.

“I know you killed people,” Dawn continues, still facing the ceiling. “After the chip. Not just the ones I saw. It’s part of your nature, part of you, and I knew that. I knew it the second I asked them to remove it, and I shouldn’t have… but I was too weak.”

Spike looks down.

He tries to feel remorse, tries to feel guilt, but he can’t. His promise was to protect Dawn, not the world. Oh, sure, any white hat will say he’s splitting hairs and, okay… yeah, he kind of _is_ , and he knows Buffy would disapprove…

But Buffy isn’t here.

She isn’t here.

Sixty-four years later, the thought still cuts him.

“Of course,” Dawn says. “Turn back time and I’d probably make the same damn choice.” There’s a dark, rasping chuckle. “You promised my sister you’d protect me. And you did.” She turns her eyes back towards him. “Buffy would be proud.”

After a moment of stunned wordlessness, the irony simmers and Spike suddenly can’t stop the laugh that drags itself from its throat. “I think you and I are rememberin’ two completely different birds, niblet.”

Dawn only squeezes his hand gently in response, then:

“What are you going to do after I’m gone?”

Spike suddenly imagines slinking out as doctors disconnect Dawn’s cooling body from the machines, imagines slinking into the darkness again and never looking back. He wouldn’t be leaving just Dawn though. He thinks of Jocelyn and her two kids. Dawn’s grandchildren. The next generation of Summers-spawn.

Without planning to, he’s somehow become their “Uncle Spike” too.

Still, his promise had been to Buffy, not to the family as a whole. He owes them nothing. That and he’s heard recent word from Dru. She’s still… well, not _alive_ , but present and kicking. He’s gotten letters, gotten… other messages, pleas for her boy to return home. The temptation to obey nearly swallows him whole. There’s a part of him that longs for her touch, for any intimate touch; while he’s come to embrace the warmth of familial hugs and shoulder pats, he can’t help but crave something purely his own again.

Of course, Spike also knows how quick Dru’ll be to drop him as soon as someone shinier, someone more _effulgent_ , passes by. The second he submits to her, her pleas—her need—will end and she’ll move onto the next demon, just like she always had and always would.

Love with strings.

Meanwhile, this is… he doesn’t know exactly what this is, but—

Spike squeezes Dawn’s hand.

“I’m stayin’ right here,” he promises. “Till the end of the world.”

* * *

**London, 2147**

Spike flicks open his lighter without taking his eyes off the great city that’s sprawled out before him. The chimney bricks scrape against his thin t-shirt as he braces his weight against them. He lights up, inhales, and winces at the taste—five years ago the good-for-nothing-scientists finally discovered a way to take the cancerous portions out. Great for humans, end of bloody era for him…

He pushes the smoke out and draws a second breath anyway.

Nearby, Beth Summers—Dawn’s great-great… (or was it great-great- _great?_ ) granddaughter—sits with her feet dangling over the edge of the Mayfair building. Her eyepiece is on, projecting a neon-blue calendar onto the air in front of her. She flicks through dates with a lazy finger.

They’ve travelled here for a magitech conference—Beth as a presenter, Spike as a mother-requested bodyguard. He’s lost count of the times he’s been passed along from mother to daughter, like some inanimate piece of property. Spike supposes the abuse of power—the assumption that they can just ask and he’ll roll over for belly scratches—should annoy him, but it doesn’t. Besides, the Summers family would be lost without him. They’ve made a reputation for themselves over the generations—a line flooded with witches and soothsayers and the occasional potential and practically every other thing outside humanity’s liberal definition of normal.

In short, a line flooded with flashy, crunchy targets for both demons and those who cavorted with them.

“Oooh,” Beth coos, pulling forward a event and expanding the details. “Says they’re doing Shakespeare in Hyde Park on Sunday.”

Spike lifts an eyebrow. “Sunday? As in Sunday _‘day’_ day? Come on, bit. Even for you that’s dim.”

Beth pouts. “They’ve been making those new skin creams, you know. Other vampires swear by them.”

“Well, that’s great for those other vampires.”

“It’s been cloudy all week. If you just take my hat—”

“I said, _no_ ,” Spike snaps. “Vampires and sun don’t mix. Any new-fangled miracle tech that claims otherwise is foolin’ itself.”

Beth snorts, shaking her head as she returns to her calendar. “You’re gonna to have to hop along with modern times sooner or later. Can’t stay a 200-year-old fuddy duddy forever.”

Spike stares up at the night sky, clouded with purple. “275,” he absentmindedly corrects.

“Whatever… Town of London?”

“Overrated.”

“Madame Tussauds?”

“Boring when you’ve seen half the originals.”

“You have _not_ seen— ugh…” Beth purses her lips and keeps scrolling. “West End? I’ll even let you pick the musical.”

Spike pauses, smoke leaving his nostrils in a steady stream. He _had_ been missing a lot of good ones recently…

“Not quite London-specific though, is it?” he finally says. “And we just did a Broadway crawl last month.”

“Now you’re just complaining to complain. West End it is.”

Spike scowls but doesn’t protest further, so Beth taps the date and starts typing in the air. As he stares at the holo-technology, a sliver of worry curls through him, whispering that one day he really _will_ fall behind. He’s been doing his best to ignore it, but the world’s getting more and more interconnected. With every passing decade, it’s harder for people like him to stay off the grid, and he’s starting to rely on the Summers women just as much as they rely on him. He’s unsure whether that thought discomforts him or not… so he decides shove it aside for now.

He turns back to Beth. She’s silent.

Too silent.

“Vampires,” she says, a hand on her eyepiece. “Quarter mile north.”

Spike frowns. The eyepiece has a long-range motion and heat sensor built into it; by sensing one and not the other, it makes for a pretty reliable vampire tracker. “Might not be evil,” he finally says.

The initiative’s old chip project has been spreading recently as technology continues to shrink and cheapen. It turns Spike’s stomach, but there isn’t anything he’s been able to do to stop it. Some of his brethren follow in his footsteps and turn… well, if not good, then towards some middling grey area, adapting to their new position in life, just like they’d originally adapted as fledges. Others barely scrape by, pathetic shells of their previous, only slightly _less_ pathetic selves.

“Might not be good,” Beth counters.

The two stare at each other.

Spike reluctantly pushes himself off the chimney and stubs his barely used cigarette out beneath his boot. Beth clicks her eyepiece to its patrol setting. As she stands, his duster swishes around her legs, swallowing her form—a temporary birthday loan. Every single member of the Summers clan has _always_ been obsessed with his duster, and Beth has been one of the worst so far, begging him for it since she was in kindergarten. It’s never gonna happen—frozen hell and all that—but for now, and _just_ for now… the black leather suits her.

She grins at him in the darkness. “Ready, Uncle Spike?”

As it happens sometimes, there’s something in the flash of her smile that transports him to another place, another time. For those brief moments, it’s his golden-haired goddess standing before him, illuminated by sunshine, by that inextinguishable light she’d always held inside her, that light that’d carried her through so many battles, that’d ultimately dragged him roaring and clawing from the darkness.

And then it’s gone, the illusion dissolved.

A hollowness expands in Spike’s stomach as he realizes, as he sometimes does, that even if Buffy _had_ survived the battle against Glory all those years ago, even if every outcome-changing alteration of his grief-stricken dreams had come true… over a hundred years had passed. She’d still be dead by now. And so perhaps it’s better it happened this way: giving up parts of himself to an ever-growing family tree instead of everything to just one stick of it…

“Uncle Spike?” Beth repeats, face creasing in concern.

Spike shakes himself free of his useless, brooding thoughts. The past was the past. He cracks his knuckles as he looks north, nostrils flaring in anticipation of the upcoming fight, and grins. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”


End file.
